This is intended as the beginning of the section of law (still looking for a clever title for the section):

The True Believers did grow in number and in rank, and there was word spread that a great accounting should take place; a census should be taken and in that census should be counted all the men and the males among them, and all the women, and the females among them, and the children and the girls and the boys, and the infants. And the leaders spoke up among the True Believers and declared that the numbers of the accounting of the census seemed to make sense not, for there was no accounting of the persons with indeterminate gender, and also of the persons who felt themselves to be gender mis-identified, and also, to count the children, then re-count the boy children and the girl children separately seemed to nearly double the numbers, not accounting for the gender non-specific.

And thus the Great Accounting of the True Believers did begin again, and this time was it done by sorting the males and the females and the children and the gender non-specific, and the numbers were tallied and the numbers and ranks of the True Believers seemed to be relatively accurate and the land did feast upon the Holy Meal of the Pasta and Sauce and Orbs made of whatever Protein was the True Believersâ€™ Choice, and the Green Salad was dressed and served and The Tasty Garlic Bread passed. The desired beverages were quaffed and there was great fellowship among the counted of the number and the rank of the True Believers. Afterward, when the plates of the cleaned were gathered, the sweetened desserts of chocolate, dark or milk or white, or not of chocolate at all, but rather simply desserts as the True Believers did prefer, were passed.

And the True Believers gave great thanks and worship unto the Wise and Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster; the men and the women among them did rejoice, and the children, both the male children and the female, and the infants did rejoice, and the gender non-specific. All rejoiced and gloried in the Wisdom and Greatness of the One True Creator who made All That Is and Should Be Taught as Science. Each and all among the number and the rank were sated; their hunger was sated and their thirst was quenched, and they were glad and tired. For their numbers had been counted with relative accuracy and among them were many; 6354 were the men and 7364 were the women and 25366 were the children and 3907 were the gender non-specific regardless of age. And they did look upon one another, and finally it was asked: What was the point of all that, then? And came the answer from On High: â€œIâ€™m not quite sure, but it was one heck of a party!â€

At the rising of the sun the next morning, as the True Believers did awaken, the men among them did arise, and the women and the children and the gender non-specific did arise, a great non-threatening yet thundering voice did call down from On High: â€œMy Children Whom I Have Touched, Who Are Caressed By My Noodly Appendage, it is My wish for you that you live long and happily, and should have great good fun and gain much knowledge and use the brain I have given you and the free will I have given you and the discount shopping coupons and library cards I have given you.â€ And then a great sigh did rumble throughout the Earth and throughout the Sky and throughout all Creation. â€œBut,â€ continued the Wiggly Lord, â€œI figure I ought to include for you a few specifics in case of emergency.â€

The holy scribes did run for their hammers and their chisels and their tablets of stone, and began to hammer furiously away in the ancient languages of the day. They did endeavor to catch all the words of the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster as accurately as possible, and with few mistakes, for they wanted to please him, and make him happy. They wanted not to incur His Wrath. They did hammer and did pound and the chips of granite did collect at their feet and this transcribing they tried to do with much accuracy, for there was not, in those olden times of stone tablets, spell-check nor auto correct nor copy-paste. They did live in dark times indeed, and hungered for the wisdom of the Holy Flying Pasta One. Thusly they wrote, for this he spake:

from here, go back to the first long post about the booger-eating thing. Yeah, I know. I'm twisted.

And so it came to pass that the copying and the pasting of the posting of the writing, as it did appear thus far in this thread, was done. And the FSM looked down, and His Great Noodly Appendages did quiver with saucy delight. And he did proclaimeth: "Cool. So Far, So Good." Thus spake Our Lord in Marinara.

It was proclaimed throughout that Boards of His Holy Discussion that the Divinely Inspired Writing should not cease, but rather should continue, for to Him, it is most pleasing. And yea, His humble galleyscribe Solipsy did toss and turn upon the seas of the keyboard at all unreasonable hours, and did gather the writings of the inspired, and did organize them and nit-pick them, but not without permission, and did seek to credit them, and will be in touch with the writers of them if any questions ariseth, and doth encourage said writers for to do the same.

writing is easier than talking, but has more rules, does spelling and grammer really count? i mean, to a certain extent, but as long as there are the same letters, and the first and last are the same, the order inbetween dosen't affect reading.

...

so call me what you will, but i am not going to spell or use grammer correctly. unless it really counts, like in a book intent on publishment, or school work.

I refute this utterly. If writing was easier than talking, how come so many people are illiterate?

Writing *badly* is easier than talking. But for actual writing, one should *always* endeavour to spell and use grammar correctly, unless txt mssgn (though even in that I aim for good grammar).

Because the rules aren't there just to make the writing look good; the rules are designed to imitate the inflections and idiosyncracities of speech, so therefore those who write properly will be better understood by their readers. When I read poorly written passages, it is like listening to a person with a hefty speech impediment. You can roughly understand them, but it is hard work.

The only allowable difference between official (school/office work) and unofficial (chat rooms) writing, as far as I am concerned, is the occasional typo.

Freak Ash wrote:Writing *badly* is easier than talking. But for actual writing, one should *always* endeavour to spell and use grammar correctly, unless txt mssgn (though even in that I aim for good grammar).

Agreed Freak,

I've been using the edit function, or typing into Word then transferring across. The latter requires only minor formating to be done.

It's nice to be inspired, but the impact is lost if it's not worded properly.
The Holy Scriptures are longer than normal posts, requiring good wording to hold the readers attention.

Have a look at the Invisble Pink Unicorn (our rivals) scriptures and get a feel for what we should be aiming for.

okay, sorry. actually when i said writing i menat typing, because i type alot more than i write. and i guess that means if you checked out FPP, you'll notice i haven't spell check anything. i kind of forgot. I will soon. before sending the final version to Soliphsy. although alot of words are misspelled on purpose, because of the way FPP is.

daftbeaker wrote:But if I stop bugging you I'll have to go back to arguing with Qwerty about whether beauty is truth and precisely what we both mean by 'purple'

Any statistical increase in the usage of the emoticon since becoming Admin should not be considered significant, meaningful, or otherwise cause for worry.

And from the mountain He just created, His Wiggly Greatness said unto the trees and the Midgit:

"Ummm yeah. So one thing that really annoys me is people who don't leave the bathroom in a condition suitable for the next user. We're not talking about the ageless 'seat up or seat down' debate, but the overall cleanliness of the facility in general. People who don't flush or use the brush to get rid of any Klingons, leave toothpaste residue or shaving scum in the sink, don't rinse out the shower, leave puddles of water on the floor, or fail to spritz the air freshener are subject to My wrath. And, as I'm not a vengeful God but a playful One, I will get you for your malfeasance. It will be amusing and public, so think about that next time you are about to leave the can."

And most verily it was written, and His Noodliness said it was good. And it was.

I'm really enjoying this thread. I especially like the law about minor traffic offenses. Been guilty myself of a couple of those, so I'll need to watch myself from now on.

However, something seemed to be missing, and I realized it's the one Law that, as I understand things, is pretty much the reason we're here. So, I took it upon myself to write up a draft. I'll welcome suggestions from those more familiar with "The Method" than I am, as well as those who are better at the manner of writing itself. Still not sure I got all my thees, thous, and thines in all the right places. So, anyway... here goes.

Update (10/04/05): Skip to second draft below.

For it is told that His greatest gift unto thee is an insatiable Hunger, an unquenchable Thirst for scientific knowledge of thine self and all the universe He has created around thee. As The Pasta and The Beer does sustain thine body, so scientific knowledge does sustain thine soul. Yea verily, not just any imaginary or make believe science will sustain thee, but only that science which can be tested and proven unto thine fellows with repeatable demonstrations, so sayeth He who is rich in Carbohydrates.

So thou shalt practice The Scientific Method, and in it shall thee find Him. Thou shalt closely Observe His Creations and thou shalt Formulate educated guesses about why things are as they are, and these guesses shall be called The Hypothesis. And Yea, "Because He made it that way" is for the lazy and the ignorant, and it shall not sustain thee. The Hypothesis shall be Tested by thine self and thine fellows, and thou shalt try not to prove, but rather disprove thine Hypothesis, for it is easy to disprove Hypothesis, but to prove them is verily impossible. And the Hypothesis that stand resilient to test, upon test, upon test, and seem indestructible to all tests shall be called Theories, and The Theories shall also be tested with gusto and zest. And the results of The Tests, both of the Hypothesis and of the Theories, shall be Evaluated without bias, prejudice, or predisposition, and the interesting ones shall be published in appropriate journals for others to Evaluate and Test as well.

Yea, thou shalt not confuse His teachings with scientific knowledge or mix them together, most especially in publicly funded institutions of education, for His teachings are verily untestable. Only when thou hast accumulated all available scientific knowledge of all His creations will His teachings co-coincide with the science and can they be compared together, and thus will He reveal Himself unto thee, and The Beer Volcano shall runneth over. So shall the True Believers denounce the lazy and the ignorant who would teach His children whimsical stories to fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge thou has yet to discover, and lead them astray from The Scientific Method which sustains them, for then they will be without sustenance and their souls will verily starve, and they too will become lazy and ignorant.

Only as the whimsical stories of the lazy and the ignorant are taught as part of The Scientific Method shall True Believers insist that His teachings be given equal time, so that His Children may at least have a fair chance at sustenance. But, as the lazy and the ignorant withdraw their silly demands, so shall the True Believers capitulate, and allow The Scientific Method be taught pure and unadulterated, so that His children may seek out and discover all knowledge He has made available to them, without the handicap of discerning fact from fiction.

Below is the second draft of The Scientific Method Law. The first two paragraphs were re-worked some (especially the second), and the remaining completely removed. After some suggestions from Solipsy, I meditated over some Penne in a Vodka Cream Sauce, and decided that any law regarding the proselytizing of those yet to be touched by His Noodly Appendage should be completely separate and not mixed with the Scientific Method. And, verily (Oh my, I'm starting to talk like this now), I believe the changes do make this draft much cleaner and more focused. So.... here it is.

For it is told that His greatest gift unto thee is an insatiable Hunger, an unquenchable Thirst for scientific knowledge of thine self and all the universe He has created around thee. As The Pasta and The Beer does sustain thine body, so scientific knowledge does sustain thine soul. Yea verily, not just any imaginary or make believe science will sustain thee, but only that science which can be tested and proven unto thine fellows with repetition, so sayeth He who is rich in Carbohydrates.

So thou shalt practice The Scientific Method, and in it shall thee find Him. Thou shalt closely Observe His Creations and their natural phenomena and thou shalt Formulate educated guesses about why things are as they are, and these guesses shall be called The Hypotheses. Thou shalt construct repeatable Experiments to challenge thine Hypotheses and these Experiments shall either support or falsify them. And thou shalt not fear The Experiments that verily falsify thine Hypotheses, for they do sustain thee. And the Hypotheses that endure shall be called The Theories, and The Theories shall also be challenged with gusto and zest. The Experiments, both of the Hypotheses and of the Theories, shall be Evaluated without bias, prejudice, or predisposition, and the interesting ones shall be published in appropriate scientific journals for peer review. And Yea, "Because He made it that way" is not a Hypothesis, nor a Theory, nor was it ever, nor shall it ever be, and it shall not sustain thee.

Note: I'd still like some feedback and suggestions from actual scientists regarding the scientific method. Of course, non-scientific feedback is welcome too.

[quote]writing is easier than talking, but has more rules, does spelling and grammer really count? i mean, to a certain extent, but as long as there are the same letters, and the first and last are the same, the order inbetween dosen't affect reading.........."

I am not a grammatician, but I feel qualified to add a little to this conversation: the writing of an illiterate scribe can be of great tedium to a reader; I would find Kant much easier to understand.

However, for the sake of ease and clarity we might want to avoid extremely long sentences, unless we are writing a philosophical dissertation, or such. I love constructing ponderous sentences for the comical effect in my other humorous writings. However, when a sentence reads like that final four-score-and-two digits sentence in Lincolnâ€™s Gettysburg Address, then I wonder whether he should not have been content with simply writing out his mailing address and let it be at that.

My own last sentence shows some 40 words. Usually I toggle back and forth in the 8-24 word range, but I have been guilty of lustfully abandoning any and all rules.

Finally, I canâ€™t resist: FSM revealed to me (in a wine-induced dream) what maketh Him rejoice in the reading of our scrolls: Heed His basic commandments:

Never write messages to HIS flock if they read like this one:
â€œYea, Iâ€™d came from the mountain and brung ya them-thar 13 commandments down.â€

No, no, no! hellfireNO! Do not write like that, for it is an abomination in the eye of FMS. Rather write like this:
â€˜Yea, I came down from the mountain to bring you His 13 commandments.â€™

On the other hand, do not be too hard on yourself; don't worry about all the rules; just write clearly and--above all, to quote Cicero, "Ubi nihil erit quod scribas, it ipsum scribito." "Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so." :compute:

Oh! And if you run across passive voices in my epistleâ€”I usually keep them on the leash; but if ya see them, they wonâ€™t bite ya!

I feel it only fair to warn anyone who might be in the process of considering becoming my minion that I am extremely fond of overly long sentences in which the subject often becomes lost due to my overuse of qualifying conjunctive phrases and prepositions in attempt to elucidate my points. I also require that you bring me doughnuts. (I like parentheses, too. I forgot to add that.) I advise that anyone wishing to assist in the process of compiling Holy Scripture not mention that I am verbose and have a fondness for cerebral wording, as this simply makes me peevish. You won't like me when I'm angry. Right, Qwerty?

Perhaps someone would enjoy writing a few paragraphs on the FSM's "LAW" regarding grammar? *Tag* Father Jerome! You're IT! Might you please shape your above statement into something "Scriptural" and "Lawlike"? Part of it is, and part of it reads as if you, Father Jerome, are saying it. Perhaps it could be put into a pseudo-Scriptural paragraph "delivered to the ancients" by the FSM? It would be hilarious.